I still owe an account of our moving weekend. Between taking care of the puppy, unpacking boxes, painting, and tutoring, I've not had too many moments to just breathe, let alone write a long blog post. However, the puppy is snoozing, and I've got a few minutes, so here goes!
First, on Thursday, March 24 (I'm THAT late!?!) Bryan and I had our final walk through to make sure everything in the house was exactly as it should be. It wasn't, though, and the guy in charge of building our house was pretty upset that it wasn't all done. There were some chips in the granite that still needed to be taken care of, the windows were filthy, and the concrete on the porch hadn't been patched - three of the many things Bryan and I said needed to be fixed from the walk through a week prior. Everything else was fine, but we wanted these things taken care of. Jimmy (our builder) made several calls and promised us he'd have these things taken care of before we closed on our house the next morning at 10am.
After the walk through, Bryan and I played a very difficult game of tetris packing as many of our belongings as possible (we exceeded our expectations!) into my CRV & his car. This required us to each take about 20 trips up and down the three flights of stairs to our apartment carrying HEAVY boxes. We were pooped. Thank goodness my parents volunteered to keep Maverick for the night so we could get all this done! It would have been about 10 times harder with a puppy underfoot. Around midnight we finally crashed, eager for the next day!
Here's our crazy apartment's dining room ready for the move. I'm SO glad this is just a picture and isn't real anymore!
On Friday, March 25, we were both up at the crack of dawn despite the exhausting evening prior. It was even better than Christmas morning as a kid - we were finally going to close and be allowed to move into our house! We didn't need to be downtown until 10am, but we decided to splurge on breakfast out and leave in pretty of time to make allowances for traffic, etc. This meant we were at the Ryland office by 8:45am .... a good hour and fifteen minutes before our appointment. That wouldn't have been so bad, but the people who had the appointment before us were running late, dang it. Good grief. Around 10:45, we signed about a million pages and initialed a million more, before it was truly ours!! We jumped in the car and headed to our new neighborhood so we could pick up the keys at the neighborhood Ryland office! To say we were excited when the keys were handed to us is a major understatement.
Unfortunately, the high wore off pretty quickly. When we got to the house we found out that the call we got from Jimmy that morning saying everything had been finished by 10am when we signed was not quite accurate. I think there were about 15 people swarming over our house getting stuff done. We didn't get to unlock the door ourselves, we didn't get to just walk around and feel awesome that it was ours. Instead, we had to get out of other people's way and feel guilty about interfering as we moved in the boxes and suitcases from our vehicles. I was getting pretty upset when they were still there a good hour and more after we got there .... around 1:30pm. I was excited about my parents and Bryan's grandparents joining us, and wouldn't have minded their company, but they hadn't come yet. Instead, strangers were all over our house just watching us as we moved in. I was also very hungry (anyone who knows me knows how grumpy I get when I'm hungry), but we obviously didn't have any food yet, so anyway, let's just say I was getting majorly cranky. It could have had something to do with the fact that we got very little sleep, and were getting pretty sore from all the heavy lifting the night before and then again as we unloaded all of it and moved into the new house by ourselves.
Thankfully my parents came with both food and our puppy in hand, and I started feeling a lot better. The people had finally fixed everything and left, and I started feeling like it was our house after all. Bryan, Dad & I went back to the apartment with Dad's truck & my CRV to get a second load. Mom stayed at the house to keep an eye on Maverick & start unpacking/arranging our kitchen. We made sure to pick up our bed stuff as well as another huge amount of boxes, chairs & other odds and ends when we went back so that we could sleep in our house that night (yay!). After unloading the second round, Mom & I made a quick Wal-Mart run for a few things, while Bryan's grandparents showed up with his Dad and Roger (his uncle). They had loaded the things we had stored at MeMaw and Paw's house (like our second bed, kitchen table & coffee table) and brought them over and unloaded them. Since our arms and legs were killing us by this time, we were especially grateful for the help!! And we were grateful to start having some chairs around! Sometime that afternoon the Lowe's guys came and delivered our new Samsung refrigerator, which we love!
Dad decided to take a break with Maverick. I think they had the same idea in mind ... mmm, a nap :)
That night Bryan & I slept GREAT. We were pooped & we were in our new house! Maverick, however, did not sleep so good .... (we're still working on this howling/barking business). Then on Saturday Ronnie & Roger were a huge help at the apartment. They brought a moving van to get all of our big furniture (couch, chairs, table, etc) as well as the boxes of food, boxes of other stuff & random other odds and ends. By this time we had just about emptied the apartment (THANK GOODNESS). I lost count of how many times everyone went up and down, carrying stuff. It was hot and those stairs start adding up, so we were glad to unload the truck into our first floor garage, haha. My parents joined us with some other stuff we had stored at their house, and they helped us start unpacking. Dad put together our end tables and coffee tables and Mom helped finish organizing the kitchen. Then Paw & MeMaw came back over and Paw started re-doing our pantry and linen closets. I promise in a future post I'll post a before & after picture of the pantry because it's wonderful now!
After all this huffing and puffing, it was nice to start just unpacking and arranging. The only other heavy lifting that needed to be done was moving everything from the garage to our "second" story. I did that the next week while Bryan was at work (minus the desk & couch which were thankfully already upstairs thanks to Ronnie & Roger). Unfortunately I've got several badly strained muscles in my neck/upper back/shoulder area, and I'm not supposed to be doing lifting of any kind. Oh well. Two weeks later the muscle relaxers are finally helping with the added strain I put on them that weekend. Ouch, ouch, ouch. Our jacuzzi tub is getting a lot of use too :)
I have to emphasize how much we REALLY appreciated everyone who helped move!! Mom, Dad, Ronnie, Roger, MeMaw & Paw ---- THANK YOU. So much.
What was Maverick doing while we worked our butts off, you may ask. Well, this about sums it up:
Good thing he's so cute :)
I've forgotten what happened each day Sunday through Friday (it all kind of blurs together), but Mom spent a few days with us to help with unpacking, Maverick & painting. Our La-Z Boy chairs were delivered (they're wonderful!) and our sectional was delivered (love it!). I also started my new job as a tutor (fabulous timing, I know). It's been a bit of a balancing act, but it's really getting close to being done. We have one bedroom that's acting as a sort of storage unit as I slowly go through it unpacking, but at least I can close the door & it's out of the way!
I know I didn't include too many pictures, but I didn't take very many (I was pretty busy). I will post some pictures of the pantry, and painting and all of that sometime soon! You've seen so many pictures of the house as it was built, that it will look so different with all of our furniture in it! It's coming soon, I promise. (Less than two weeks anyway!)
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